I’d always admired Daring Bakers challenges on foodgawker but never had the nerve to join as I am so far from being a baker it’s not even funny. Then a couple months ago they added a new challenge, daring COOKS! Sadly, I signed up on the very worst day and had to wait a month to be able to do my first challenge. Which was a molecular recipe and required a food dehydrator (uh, nope, don’t have one) or a microwave (nope) or an oven that goes below 200 degrees (again, no) so I opted out. When you sign up, you are allowed to opt out of 2 challenges a year for no good reason-now, being equipment challenged may not be a good reason, I don’t know, but I waited yet another month…

Olga‘s recipe sounded perfect! Shannon printed it out for me and within a few days I went out and got all the ingredients I was missing. She posts it in a different order, but for continuity, here’s how I did it with my changes in brackets:

Sofregit
Cooking time: aprox. 1 hour
Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 5 big red ripe tomatoes, chopped (I used 6 big plum tomatoes that I squeezed the pips out of and cut into 1/2″ dice)
• 2 small onions, chopped (I used one medium red onion-what we had)
• 1 green pepper, chopped (optional) (I used it)
• 4 or 5 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 cup of button or Portobello mushrooms, chopped (optional) (I used a quart of brown button mushrooms)
• 1 Bay leaf
• Salt
• Touch of ground cumin
• Touch of dried oregano

Directions:

1. Put all the ingredients together in a frying pan and sauté slowly until all vegetables are soft.
2. Taste and salt if necessary (maybe it’s not!) (I pureed it a bit with my immersion blender)

Rice with mushrooms, cuttlefish and artichokes
Cooking time: 45 minutes

Ingredients (serves 4):

• 4 Artichokes (you can use jarred or freezed if fresh are not available) (I used canned artichokes, I used all that were in the can)
• 12 Mushrooms (button or Portobello)
• 1 or 2 Bay leaves (optional but highly recommended)
• 1 glass of white wine (I didn’t have any wine, so I skipped it)
• 2 Cuttlefish (you can use freezed cuttlefish or squid if you don’t find it fresh)
• “Sofregit” (see recipe above)
• 300 gr (2 cups) Short grain rice (Spanish types Calasparra or Montsant are preferred, but you can choose any other short grain. This kind of rice absorbs flavor very well) – about 75 gr per person ( ½ cup per person) (I used a President’s Choice brand of Arborio rice, 1 1/2 cups)
• Water or Fish Stock (use 1 ½ cup of liquid per ½ cup of rice) (I used a 900ml container of chicken stock plus 2 cups water)
• Saffron threads (if you can’t find it or afford to buy it, you can substitute it for turmeric or yellow coloring powder)(I used turmeric)
• Allioli (olive oil and garlic sauce, similar to mayonnaise sauce) – optional (skipped it-her recipe required 1 full cup of olive oil and I didn’t want to make it and then find out that the main dish was universally hated by everyone)

Directions:

1. Cut the cuttlefish in little strips.
2. Add 1 or 2 tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan and put the cuttlefish in the pan.
3.  Cut artichokes in eights.
4. Clean the mushrooms and cut them in fourths.
5. Add a bay leaf to the cuttlefish and add also the artichokes and the mushrooms.
6. Sauté until we get a golden color in the artichokes.
7. Put a touch of white wine so all the solids in the bottom of the get mixed, getting a more flavorful dish.
8. Add a couple or three tablespoons of sofregit and mix to make sure everything gets impregnated with the sofregit. (this seemed so vague to me, so I used about 3/4 cup of sofregit to flavour everything)
9. Add all the liquid and bring it to boil.
10. Add all the rice. Let boil for about 5 minutes in heavy heat. (Arborio rice takes a while to cook properly, I think mine simmered for about half an hour)
11. Add some saffron thread to enrich the dish with its flavor and color. Stir a little bit so the rice and the other ingredients get the entire flavor. If you’re using turmeric or yellow coloring, use only 1/4 teaspoon.
12. Turn to low heat and boil for another 8 minutes (or until rice is a little softer than “al dente”)
13. Put the pan away from heat and let the rice stand a couple of minutes.

And it was GREAT. Thick, creamy, garlicky, amazing. Totally something I’d make again-not for every day as it was pretty rich-but a couple times a year for something special. No, I didn’t even bother serving any to Ari-she got mac ‘n’ cheese.

PS, sorry for all the screaming. When I edit in the ‘code’ on wordpress, it automatically does this, all caps instead of just a nice, normal, bold tag. And I even went through-TWICE-and changed it to a b tag, but it apparently switched itself back and I can not be bothered to fight the system.